The city and the university share a trolley service for students who commute from FIU’s main campus and FIU’s Engineering and Computing campus and have similarities in the logos, which both have the blue and gold colors.

"We want to be a university city," Mayor Manuel Moroño told the Herald. "We are creating housing that’s coming up for students. It’s just that we want to say we have an FIU campus in the city. It’s for marketing purposes. It’s because we are a part of FIU."

The University agrees and its president, Mark Rosenberg, sent a statement to the commission:
“Sweetwater and FIU have jointly decided that extending Sweetwater's borders to encompass FIU's engineering center on west Flagler is a logical next step."

In the past years, Sweetwater has expanded. The city annexed areas roughly bounded by Northwest Seventh and 25th streets, 107th Avenue and Florida’s Turnpike extension.